Soundfield -How A Tribe Called Red Blends Pow Wow with Electronic Music (feat. Iron Boy) – YouTube
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing – XOXO Festival (2019) – YouTube
Computer games designed as stories are much simpler. They don’t do much on their own. They don’t have missing parts. They are a missing part. What they become is entirely up to the user. And it is in this becoming that games-as-stories differ from games-as-systems. They may not be very significant by themselves, but they have limitless potential for growth. As they become part of the human who interacts with them.
Of cogs and machines
If games-as-systems are big machines that allow you to play a little cog, then games-as-stories are little cogs that want to find a place in the big machine that is the user. The system-machines require the cog to change and adapt, to try and become as perfect as itself. The little stories-cog does not change ever. But when it becomes part of a user-machine, it causes changes in that machine. And these changes know no boundaries.